Portal: In it for the Science
by iammemyself
Summary: Just why DID Chell go on testing? Repost because I didn't realise the formatting was broken.


In it for the Science

Indiana

**Characters: Chell, GLaDOS**

**Setting: Portal 2: Chapter Nine – The Part Where...**

She dives.

It is her favourite part: what the AI calls 'flinging'. Even as she does it now she remembers that penultimate test from what feels like another life: press the button, crawl out, fire orange portal on the briefly tilted wall panel, elude turret fire and leap into an abyss sketched out with a wispy blue portal, rolling triumphantly behind the waiting Cube. There were easier ways to solve that test. She had known how to solve it as soon as she glanced through the reinforced glass to assess where the bullet fire was coming from. But she had done it the hard way just so that she could fly.

And now she looks up at that oh-so-inviting broken logo from a time long past, longing desperately to soar through the aperture, ironically, and press her Boots to that twisted, rusting catwalk just beyond. She walks through the wall and stands on a platform in the sky, and with a smile she doesn't even try to contain she throws herself contentedly into a miniscule target. Through long-honed skill and precision everything lines up impeccably, and when she meets that catwalk with a clang and the release of supressed physics one knee is to the ground and the other forward, and she looks up with a grin on her face and her fist clenched in victory.

Another such fling brings her to an unexpected meeting with her old instructor, who pleads for clemency in light of her vegetative state. It is granted, and she smiles to hear that, even powerless in every way possible, the AI is still haughty and insolent and defiant. She had not thought there were still people like that in the world. People who laughed in the face of danger, who held their fear in their hands and released it into the air where it would not survive, who had guts enough to ask for their own goals to be furthered even when they were in no position to do so. It is this that earns the AI a place on the end of the wonderful Device clutched in her hands, and she runs to the elevator to face the next challenge.

Somehow, it gets better.

As the ramblings of a man long since dead echo and fade through the sagging wood and flaking asbestos, she bounces on blue patches over bottomless pits, races over three hundred foot streaks of red to launch herself over a thousand feet of certain death, and watches in awe as white-grey fountains spray out of the walls to make them into something beyond the scope of most. And through it all, she listens as the AI collapses and rebuilds herself, as the AI is faced with her forgotten past and refuses to let it break her, as the AI again settles on her goal and behaves as though assistance is a given. It is this that earns the AI that assistance, and she climbs out of the pit fully committed to helping in any way possible.

Now she is disappointed.

The tests are no longer tests: as she walks towards the button and triggers the drop for a second time, she feels let down. There is no flinging, there is no gel, no condensed sunshine or sweet chirping voices. The next chamber is better, but not by much; the funnels are beautiful, and yet she wishes she could hear the explanation behind them, an explanation the new master of this place cannot provide, and she shivers with revulsion as the perverse crab she is now using to solve the tests twitches and clicks in an eerily insect-like way. Even as everything progresses, as she is flung out into space and crossing chasms and snatching Cubes out of thin air, she is disappointed. There was something thrilling about all of this before, when she was told how this worked or what that did or how exactly this would bring her injury, but now it is… forced. Literally so, as it turns out, but the AI she carries by her side scorns the moron's needed reward, and with a smile she silently agrees with those words. To the moron no smile is given, only defiance, removing his obscene facsimile of godhead at every available opportunity.

The danger heightens; sparks fly and sputter out of frayed wires and flayed walls, a thousand glowing eyes outline the path into the smoky void, and as soon as she catches the skittering of a construct out of the corner of her eye, she knows the game is over. As she rides the funnel and the AI requests the privilege of punishing the moron severely, she silently agrees when she sets eyes on the unsubtle trap laid for her. She longs for the elegance of the AI's traps, quick and unexpected and subtle, and fondly remembers that one last chamber the AI gave her. She had stepped into that room and looked with a knowing smile at the wide leaves just visible beyond the open door, wanting to let it close around her and make it out of that impossible situation just as she had all the others, but she had not. She had gone on to defy new circumstances, from mazes filled with turrets to doors that made her stare at them confusedly until she got the joke, and as she stares at the sad, unimaginative machine in front of her she is again disappointed. Where was the puzzle? Where was the rocket, the vents, the pounding of relentless machinery? She dutifully redirects the bombs, spraying the trap with red augmentation, and as she comes upon the perversity of that previously elegant chassis she shakes her head and frowns in displeasure. This is not a nemesis. This is not a worthy adversary. This is a cobbled-together mess borne of frantic ill-planning, and she doesn't even bother running over to the pipe she obviously needs to break to get out of this. She escaped his trap with a broken pipe not an hour ago. And now she will do so again, but will find no thrill in it. She almost wishes she had thrown herself into a bottomless pit or been pressed flat between the metal teeth of a Crusher; this battle was going to be boring, and tedious. She lets herself get lost in the routine, and this is her mistake.

One final trap.

She lies on the cracked, stained ground, stunned almost beyond consciousness, staring dully at the dusty, pale case of the Device on the ground in front of her, the triumphant crowing of the moron thudding against her near-deaf ears. Droplets that smell of some harsh chemical spread across her skin, leaving it clammy and burning, light too soft to be simulated washing over her unresponsive body. She has come so far and lost everything.

No.

She wasn't going to let it happen. She wasn't going to let unrestrained chaos reign against the logical determination she has applied all this time, and as the AI had done earlier this day she lifts her broken body, takes hold of her weapon, and squeezes.

There is no pain.

It flies in the face of physics, of logic, and of common sense, but she finds herself hanging above the surface of the moon, lunar dust gathering in every crease it can reach. She gazes in awe upon the glowing grey, the ramshackle vehicle, the flag that falsely flew in the absence of atmosphere, feeling the blackness wrap itself around her and envelop her in a glittering shroud of eternal night.

Her first thought is of how remarkably lifelike they are.

For a handful of seconds, three of the greatest feats of engineering unknown to man are watching her all at once, and she marvels at them. Three unique entities, alive in their own way, one a product of accidental fumblings who had replicated itself twice with economical precision. And the AI speaks, with conviction and gesture that not even the greatest string of code could ever incite, and she is sent on her way.

She steps out into the sun, into the empty air, into the _dirt_, and rubs the top of the charred Cube with one reminiscent hand. Finally she turns and looks back.

"You said you were in it for the Science."

A pause. She smiles, knowing the AI must now get over the fact that she has at long last shared her voice.

"I am."

"So was I."

Silence save for the whispering of the wind tilting the wispy brown stalks ahead of her comes over the land again, and she leaves the Cube behind as she finally steps into the fold of life.

"Those _are_ my Long Fall Boots, you know. I'm just being generous enough to let you borrow them."

She smiles.

**Author's note**

**What I really like about Valve's games is that they let you do a lot of cool stuff. One of the coolest things they let you do in Portal 2 is that part where you fling yourself through the Aperture sign. Half-Life 2 is a lot cooler, but unfortunately it's _sans_ GLaDOS (until Half-Life 3, which if it ever comes about will, I suspect, be a Portal 3/Half-Life 3 crossover; if you've ever read my story _Ghost Ship_, you know what my theory regarding the disappearance of the _Borealis_ is).  
**

**So. It's a bit nuts, of course, and a lot of it is silly, but Aperture really was doing a lot of cool science over there. And most of you know what I'm talking about when I tell you there's a certain thrill to solving a hard test or throwing yourself into space to do a really powerful fling. So maybe Chell wasn't doing those tests grudgingly. Maybe she enjoyed them. Maybe she works at Aperture not because she's alone in the world, but because she loves science.  
**

**As for the second(ish) part, I felt that a bit of… I dunno, _life_ went out of the game when GLaDOS was no longer running the tests. I mean, what are the Excursion Funnels made of? What were they invented for? GLaDOS would have told you, but Wheatley didn't. And I much prefer watching GLaDOS pull the tests together or going through her rebuilt ones (the triple laser phase chamber is gorgeous), because Wheatley's are ugly. So Chell has to face Wheatley now instead of GLaDOS, but she doesn't want to, because without GLaDOS it's just not the same. GLaDOS puts the elements in there because she wants to see the Science at work; Wheatley does it because he has to. So you could sort of say that Chell and GLaDOS share enthusiasm for them, when there's that mutual bit to it.  
**

**This is a sort of… unusual view of Portal through Chell. She's not angry or resentful of GLaDOS, and she's actually quite proud of her for her tenacity.  
The test chamber mentioned in the first paragraph is the second portion of Test Chamber 18, from Portal. If any of you have done the Least Time Challenge for that Chamber, you'll know what I mean. If you fire a portal at the panels while they're still tilted, then run around it and jump down to the platform on the right, you can fling yourself over to the Cube. Then you can jump down to the button underneath where the Cube is. That way you don't have to do all that stuff with the High Energy Pellet (which is good because I HATE that part of the test!)I am planning to eventually post a link to a Portal playthrough/speedrun eventually. I don't know if I should call it a speedrun because it takes me 45 minutes to finish the game and I've heard it can be done in eight, which makes no sense to me but I guess it could if you noclipped through the whole thing. And I know that game is really old to post a playthrough of, but hey, why not.**


End file.
